Advertisement

Silent majority of helpers given a voice

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0

They're not as well organised as their Filipino counterparts, but Sundays in Victoria Park are more than just a day out for Hong Kong's hard-pressed army of Indonesian domestic helpers - what looks like a picnic is more like a mass union meeting.

That's how their leader, known as 'Mama Mia', rose to prominence after arriving in the first influx of Indonesian migrant workers in the late 1980s. She founded the Hong Kong Coalition of Indonesian Migrant Workers Organisation in 2000.

The coalition originally comprised six groups but it has doubled in size over the years and is the voice of Indonesia domestic worker advocacy in Hong Kong.

By comparison there are some 200 advocacy groups for Filipino domestic workers including three unions, says Luella Mirafuentes of the Alliance of Progressive Labor-HK.

The number of advocacy organisations once reflected the ethnic demographics of the city's foreign domestic worker population, but that's no longer the case.

In 1998, there were 140,357 Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong and only 31,762 from Indonesia, according to the Immigration Department. A decade later, there were 125,943 Filipino domestic helpers and 123,341 Indonesians. The Indonesian Consulate says there are now 136,640 Indonesian helpers here.

Advertisement